


Humanity

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: Thunderbirds Prompts [3]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Death, EOS - Freeform, Gen, forest fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:10:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4203990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ANONYMOUS ASKED: HUMANITY WITH JOHN AND EOS?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humanity

There’s a forest fire in northern Colorado, and John breaks down in the middle of it.

It’s a bad one–they’re all bad, but this one is the worst he can remember–a sudden shift of wind has altered the course of the blaze, sent it roaring backwards towards the crews on the ground that are fighting it. The exhaustion, the sheer weariness in the voices of the firefighters turning to stark terror, panic.

Gordon and Virgil are there, Virgil having rigged Thunderbird 2 for aerial firefighting, and Gordon coordinating other air tankers from atop TB4, floating at the lake surface. Their voices are clipped, terse with the same tension and weariness, and Virgil curses a blue streak when the wind shifts and Gordon groans softly over the radio. They’re not winning this fight, and it’s time to start thinking about evac.

Priority one–there’s a small party of firefighters, cut off on all sides by the roaring inferno, and John can hear them. He’s divided himself mentally, segmented into pieces of himself, multi-tasking. He’s got algorithms charting the path of the fire according to updated weather reports, he’s got Gordon and Virgil chattering in the background as they start to reconfigure TB2 to extract the ground crews. EOS, ever present, is filtering data as it comes in, processing it down to the essentials before it’s displayed, his first line of defense against the white noise of extraneous information. There are timers and projections mapping themselves out, and John’s brain is still in pieces when the screaming starts, and fuses him back together.

Gordon and Virgil can’t hear it, because John knows it won’t help them work. But these people are burning, in a hellish agony of heat and terror and John can’t cope with it, he  _can’t_ , he had TB2 en route, ready for pick up. He isn’t even sure how he missed the sudden shift, how the fire could have swept up and engulfed the clearing. But it has, and the screaming won’t stop, even after it does. 

John chokes, numb and shocked and horrified, and manages, “EOS, cut all feeds. Clear channels. One minute downtime,  _now_. Hail TB2 and 4, I need–I need to stop.”

“My calculations indicate we are still short of mission compliance, and delays will affect–”

“ _Cut the feeds.”_

He’s already hauled himself upward, out of the comm module, to find the nearest corner of wall in the gravity ring and wedge himself into it, voices still screaming in his head as he buries his fingers in his hair and the last of his composure gives way to panic; freezing, icy terror and shock. He doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening or why the noise won’t stop, he’s disoriented and agitated and by the time he registers EOS, softly repeating his name, it’s been an hour.

“John?”

“I’m here,” is all he manages to mumble, the noise in his head having given way to a migraine and his eyes red and raw as he stares blankly at the readouts. “I–oh, god. I don’t know–I…what happened? EOS? I–”

“The mission has been completed, compliance at a rate of eighty-nine percent. There were three casualties. Relief crews from the GDF have taken over. Gordon and Virgil are on return approach to Tracy Island.”

None of this answers his question, though it should have. “I can’t remember what–”

“Biometric readouts indicate a period of acute stress reaction. Secondary trauma by emergency personal is not uncommon. In your absence I have superseded essential functionality and relayed the appropriate data to mission personnel. The mission is completed.”

_Panic attack_. “EOS, you–if you hadn’t been here–” John buries his face in his hands and continues to fail to process what’s happened. “I…thank you. Thank you, EOS, I couldn’t–it was just too much, and I–”

“You were too human. Humanity calls to humanity. It is a bug and not a feature.”

For the first time, there’s a note of compassion in the AI’s tone–compassion for  _him_ , and not for the people who had been screaming, burning,  _dying_ on the surface of the earth below. EOS has the ability to toggle this on and off. John doesn’t. And not for the first time, he’s jealous of that cold, binary rationality.

 


End file.
